is christianity a cause of science

8/20/2019 Is Christianity a Cause of Science

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CHRISTIANITY: A CAUSE OF MODERN SCIENCE?

The Duhem-Jaki and Merton Theses Explained

by Eric V. Snow

When we think of Christianity's role in the rise of science, what do we

think of? How it hindered it, such as the conflict between Galileo (1564-1642) and the Inquisition in the seventeenth century? Or, perhaps, do we

think of Thomas Huxley debating evolution with Bishop Wilberforce in the

nineteenth century? What we need to do now is take a deep breath, and take a

step out of today's overwhelmingly secularized intellectual climate, and

consider this: Modern science arose among avowedly Christian clerics,

theologians, monks, and professors of medieval and renaissance Catholic

universities and monasteries. Normally, the Middle Ages are regarded as

having a worldview very opposed to that of science by atheists and agnostics

similar to the manner Leonard Peikoff, the literary and philosophical heir of

novelist Ayn Rand, expressed himself: "For centuries, nature had been

regarded as a realm of miracles manipulated by a personal deity, a realm whose

significance lay the clues it offered to the purposes of its author."1 Yet,

if science gradually arose during the medieval and Renaissance periods, butChristianity and science are seen as totally incompatible, how did this occur?

After all, neither Galileo nor Copernicus (1473-1543), who maintained the sun

was at the center of the solar system, not the earth, were skeptics or

unbelievers, unlike such medieval predecessors as the Islamic poet and

astronomer Omar Khayyam (1048?-1122) or Frederick II (1194-1250), Holy Roman

Emperor? The remarkable truth is that the worldview of Christianity was

absolutely necessary for the rise of modern science, as shown by the Duhem-

Jaki and (only secondarily) Merton theses.

The Duhem-Jaki and Merton theses are quite different in how they tie

Christianity to the birth of science. Pierre Duhem and Stanley Jaki,

respectively past and present professors of Roman Catholicism, see a direct

tie between Christian metaphysics, its rejections of various classical Greek

philosophical conceptions, and the birth of a self-sustaining science.2 On

the other hand, Robert K. Merton, the sociologist who wrote Science in

Seventeenth Century England,3 ties seventeenth century English Puritanism's

1Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels as quoted in Harry Binswanger,

ed., The Ayn Rand Lexicon Objectivism from A to Z (New York: New American

Library, 1988), p. 297. 2Jaki himself probably would be embarrassed by entitling this historical

interpretation in this manner. He routinely freely draws upon and repeatedly

mentioning in his works Pierre Duhem, and even wrote a biography of him.

Pierre Duhem is the French scientist and historian of science who wrote the

magisterial ten volume Le Systeme Du Monde. I label this thesis after theboth of them because Jaki seems to be the main "scholarly popularizer" of

Duhem's thesis in the English speaking world. Duhem's work mentioned above is

significant for almost single-handedly creating scholarly interest in medieval

science. 3Robert K. Merton, "Science in Seventeenth Century England," Osiris, 1938,

pp. 360-632. This is the original edition of this book.

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ethics to the rise of English science much the same way the German sociologist

Max Weber tied the rise of capitalism to Calvinism.4 Merton's approach is

quite different from Jaki's and Duhem's, since Merton sees the rise of English

science only as a relatively inadvertent product of Puritanism's values and

beliefs, using an externalist approach that analyzes how religious beliefs and

actions caused by them affect the larger society. By contrast, Duhem and Jaki

take a more internalist approach by looking at the intellectual roots ofscience and by seeing theology and science as closely tied together in the

medieval era since the same people often did both (such as the Frenchman

Nicole Oresme).5 Merton only sees Protestantism as helping science along, and

not as creating it, for Galileo, the discoverer of the inverse squared law of

the acceleration of falling bodies in physics, and his predecessors were

Catholics.6 Somewhat curiously, these two theses often seem to pass each

other like two ships in the night without partisans or critics of one

mentioning the other.7

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE DOES NOT EQUAL SCIENCE

We must avoid assuming technological advance proves a given civilization

has science, or modern science, for most inventions that affected daily lifein the pre-modern world economically were "empirical" discoveries by craftsmen

and other pragmatic types, not true scientists meditating on the laws of

nature. While the Greeks, Chinese, Indians, and Islam all had what can be

fairly called "science," their science lacked the rigor and vigor that would

characterize the West's science from Galileo onwards, and soon fizzled out on

own. In order to have some idea of what culture's science really qualifies as

science it's best to introduce a definition here to avoid misunderstandings:

4Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958). Especially interesting in this context is

note 145 on p. 249, where Puritanism's tendencies toward empiricism are

mentioned. Discussing Spener's work in this area, he says a consequence of

Puritanism scientifically was "that just as the Christian is known by the

fruits of his belief, the knowledge of God and His designs can only be

attained through a knowledge of His works." 5See the explanation of externalist and internalist approaches in the

introduction of George Basalla, ed., The Rise of Modern Science External or

Internal Factors? (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1968), pp. vii-xiv. 6Theodore K. Rabb, "Religion and the Rise of Modern Science," Past and

Present, July 1965, pp. 122, 125. 7Stanley Jaki never seems to mention the Merton thesis in any his books I

used for this essay. Likewise, such a critic of the Merton thesis as Rabb

seems to be oblivious to Duhem's thesis. Hence, he write when attacking Hill:

"In the story of the rise of science, therefore, religion is a peripheral

concern." Duhem doesn't even rate a (negative) mention. See Rabb, "Religionand the Rise of Modern Science," Past and Present, July 1965, p. 126. About

the only place I found the two mentioned together was this comment by Hall:

"Merton, who made no reference to either Duhem or Wohlwill, saw a parallel

lack of continuity in the attitudes of society to science." See A. Ruppert

Hall, "Merton revisited or Science and Society in the Seventeenth Century,"

History of Science (Cambridge, England: W. Heffer & Sons, 1963), p. 12.

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The systematized collection of knowledge about nature through using only

reason and sense experience in order to discover the underlying laws of

nature, which explain how nature is organized and allow future accurate

predictions about nature's processes or objects to be made. For all the

world's civilizations, only Greek geometry fully met this definition, along

with mathematics in general, prior to the time of Galileo, and that is only by

excising the "sense experience" part of this definition.

Just what are the tenets of the Duhem-Jaki thesis? First, it denies

that sociological non-intellectual, externalist causes are sufficient

conditions to create modern science. As Jaki put it:

This historiography of science has still to face up honestly to

the problem of why three great ancient cultures (China, India, and

Egypt) display independently of one another, a similar pattern

vis-a-vis science. The pattern is the stillbirth of science in

each of them in spite of the availability of talents, social

organization, and peace--the standard explanatory devices

furnished by all-knowing sociologies of science on which that

historiography relies ever more heavily.8

All of these conditions may be necessary to allow a civilization to develop

science, but we have to look to the intellectual climate to understand why

only one particular civilization developed a self-sustaining, modern science.

Peculiarly, this same culture had been in the immediately preceding centuries

intellectually and economically quite backward compared to the great Eurasian

cultures that rivaled it. Those influenced by Marxism may often be loathe to

investigate how the intellectual climate can independently change on its own,

and influence politics and economics. For we should realize that while the

mode of production (the technology and system of economics utilized by a

society) can and does influence the superstructure of ideology as Marx

maintained, the reverse influence can and does happen also. "Ideas have

consequences" is an assumption that won't be proven here,9 but it is a

perfectly reasonable one when so much religious behavior is not tied to the

economic self-interest of some class in society.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS A CULTURE MUST AVOID TO DEVELOP SCIENCE

So now, according to Duhem and Jaki, what ideas are necessary to have

(or, to be more precise generally, not have) in the intellectual climate of a

civilization to keep science self-sustaining, instead of dying out after a few

centuries of progress? First, a linear, potentially quantifiable conception

of time that clearly distinguishes past, present, and future promotes a

scientific view of nature and its cause-effect relationships is necessary for

a scientific outlook. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this idea comes from8Stanley Jaki, The Savior of Science (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway,

1988), p. 35. 9 A contemporary example is how Boris Yeltsin and his group of

revolutionaries have the ideology of capitalism (or did!), and seek to impose

it on a (formerly?) socialist economy.

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the act of God in creating the universe from nothing at some specific point of

time in the past, and then time is seen as progressing through the present on

to the future with the second coming and the day of judgment. The alternative

view of time, the concept of the "Great Year," maintains centuries-long time

cycles exist in which the future repeats the past exactly or almost exactly,

making progress of any kind theoretically impossible. This idea of time

breeds a sense of complacency ("we know it all already") and/or hopelessness,hindering the development of science in a given culture. Second, if science

is to exist, explanations of natural phenomena must avoid a priori, pseudo-

scientific "explanations" that really do not describe the causes of events,

such as astrology. Third, science is hindered by the organismic view of

nature. This idea conceives all of the universe as alive, as if it was one

huge organism which goes through the above mentioned cyclical process from

birth, to maturity, then death, to be born again. The tie to pantheism--

believing EVERYTHING is God, a standard Hindu view--is obvious here. This

outlook sees what we moderns consider inanimate (and non-divine) objects, like

rocks, the planets, the stars, the oceans, and other natural objects to have

wills of their own, or intelligences of their own. Fourth, science is

hindered if the reality of the basic orderliness of the universe ("the

external real world") is denied. Humans will not often investigate carefullywhat is considered not to really exist, or that which will be changed at whim

by the God(s), or nature herself. Fifth, the heavens (outer space) must not

be considered alive, or divine, if a scientific astronomy is to exist. Sixth,

a balance between reason and faith is necessary, without the religious people

totally rejecting science or natural laws, and without the

philosophers/scientists totally rejecting the claims of religious truth.

Seventh, man needs to be seen as fundamentally different from the rest of

nature, as having a mind that makes him qualitatively different from the

animals, etc., not just quantitatively different. The foundations for this

view are laid in the Judeo-Christian worldview in Genesis where man and woman

were made in God's likeness and image, and were told they had dominion over

the animals (Gen. 1:26-29). So long as all or most of false ideas in these

areas are believed by a great majority of the intellectuals/"wisemen" of a

given culture, a self-sustaining science will not comes to exist in a given

civilization, especially any true science of bodies moving in the external

real world (i.e., physics, unlike math).

Now, the tie between the acceptance or rejection of such ideas and the

rise of modern science may not be altogether obvious.10 Hence, a lot of

explanation is needed to prove such connections, and this essay is only

scratching the surface. Readers seeking more evidence should read Jaki's

10Probably the best one book on this subject in English is: Stanley Jaki,

Science and Creation From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (New

York: Science History Publications, 1974). Of course, the ultimate source onthis subject is Pierre Duhem's Le Systeme du Monde, with its ten (!) volumes,

most of which has yet to be translated from the French. A good project for

someone or some group who wishes to do immeasurable good for the cause of

Christian apologetics would be to pay a group of scholars to translate this

work into English so it could have more influence in the English-speaking

world.

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works in particular.11 Also, it should be noted that some civilizations had

all or most of these false ideas, such as Hindu India, while other(s) had

fewer of them (China), and other(s) still fewer (Islam). Correspondingly, the

last progressed in science further as compared to the other two

correspondingly to the acceptance of such ideas, and the second more than the

first. For instance, the Chinese lacked the delusion the heavens were divine

and/or living.

12

Such an idea was found in On the Heavens, a very influentialwork by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 b.c.), which hindered

indigenous Islamic science13 permanently, and Christian science for many

centuries before being finally cast off. On the other hand, Hindu science

concerning the material world was crushed by almost all these faulty

intellectual ideas: the external real world and its orderliness were denied,

eternal cycles and the organismic view of nature were espoused, and the

heavens were seen as divine. Islamic science would have become self-

sustaining possibly, if its holy book the Quran (Koran) had not emphasized

God's will and power so much as against His reason, and if Muslim philosophers

and scientists had not become so mesmerized by Aristotle's physics and

philosophy. Let's briefly consider each of these great civilizations in turn,

and see how these faulty metaphysical concepts held their science back from

continual development.

WHY DIDN'T CHINA DEVELOP SCIENCE BEFORE EUROPE?

When we look at the great civilization of China, and its marvelous

wealth, population, and technological prowess during the ancient and medieval

periods, it is easy to wonder why science did not occur there first.14 Paper,

gunpowder, the compass, and moveable type were all Chinese inventions.

China's sophisticated rice agriculture, improved by selective plant breeding,

was much more productive than contemporaneous medieval European agriculture.15

Yet, such technological accomplishments do not prove China had modern

science:

Nevertheless the accompanying assumption of Singer [who influenced

Joseph Needham, the great Sinologist of Chinese science and

technology] and of his era [the early twentieth century] that

engineering innovation has almost always sprung from prior

scientific discovery is not warranted by the facts. This

11Two good places to begin are: Stanley L. Jaki, The Savior of Science

(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1988) and Jaki, The Origin of Science and

the Science of Its Origin (South Bend, IN: Regnery/Gateway, 1978). 12Jacques Gernet, "Christian and Chinese World Views in the Seventeenth

Century," Diogenes, Spring 1979, p. 105. 13Jaki, Science and Creation, pp. 205, 208.

14

See Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony The World System A.D.1250-1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 322. An in-depth

analysis in the form of a series of articles can be found in Hu Daojing, Li

Guohao, et al., eds., Explorations in the History of Science and Technology in

China (Shanghai: Shanghai Chinese Classics Publishing House, 1982). 15 Alan K. Smith, Creating a World Economy Merchant Capital, Colonialism, and

World Trade 1400-1825 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 17-18.

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certainly confused Needham about China's influence upon European

science, and I suspect that it has not clarified his probings of

the Chinese phenomena.16

This distinction Abu-Lughod appears to have missed,17 which is why it was not

mere time and chance China declined whilst the West rose, riding the back of

the first modern science.

What were some of the science-hindering metaphysical concepts found in

Chinese philosophy and religion? First of all, the concept of eternal cycles

was most certainly present. One Buddhist monk attacked the Christian dogma of

creation as follows:

Space, worlds, and beings have no beginning nor end if we consider

them not in themselves and individuals but in their totality.

They are eternal from this global point of view. They proliferate

without end and during incalculable cosmic periods progress

through successive stages of formation, stability, degradation and

then a return to nothingness.18

Such ideas were no mere individual eccentricity of this monk, but were part

and parcel of Chinese intellectual life, having apparently been strengthened

by the entrance of Buddhism from Hindu India, and were assimilated into Neo-

Confucian thought.19 What are the problems caused by acceptance of such

cycles of thousands of years in which the world and its civilizations are

repeatedly created and destroyed only to be created again? Such views create

a sense of metaphysically-induced hopelessness and passivity since no matter

how hard humans may struggle to achieve, work, and think, the results of all

efforts will be destroyed.20 Also, a non-linear view of time makes careful,

precise quantification (measurement using numbers) of time irrelevant. It also

makes people tend to confuse the order of cause and effect since the idea of

this-after-that (succession) is weakened. Yet science requires non-passive

16Lynn White Jr., "Review Symposia Science in China," Isis, March 1984, p.

178. Another useful critique of Needham's work is Willard J. Peterson,

"'Chinese Scientific Philosophy' and Some Chinese Attitudes Towards Knowledge

about the Realm of Heaven-and-Earth," Past and Present, May 1980, pp. 20-30. 17 Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, p. 322. 18 As quoted from Jacques Gernet, "Christian and Chinese World Views," p. 104.

See pp. 100-102 for more examples. 19Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2, History of

Scientific Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1962), with the

assistance of Wang Ling, pp. 485-487, 420, 404; Jaki, Science and Creation,

pp. 33-35. 20

However, such ideas could also breed the opposite attitude, of complacency,"the illusion that one is and remains on top, at least in the sense that the

irreversible decline will begin to be felt only by one's distant progeny"

(Jaki, Savior of Science, p. 42). That is, instead of despondently waiting

for the cycles of history to bring a future "golden age," you may think you

are presently living during a "golden age." Hence, you begin to think no

further improvements are possible or necessary.

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investigators of nature, precise quantification of time, and the correct

knowledge of causes, so the above false ideas need to be firmly rejected for

it to exist.

Jaki illustrates the consequences of the Chinese view of time as lacking

of sense of succession, weakening their view of cause and effect with

the fact that the Chinese saw nothing inordinate in attributing

the political failure of a certain prince to the sacrificing of

humans at his burial. As both political impotence and cruelty

evidence the absence of the same virtue, one could replace the

other as explanation regardless of their sequence.21

Jaki goes on to quote Granet's comment that cause and effect did not matter to

the Chinese, but instead saw the world as consisting of manifestations whose

order did not matter since being "Equally expressive, they appeared

interchangeable."22 With the Chinese having such a conception of time, a true

modern science would never have spontaneously arise among them--or any other

civilization believing in eternal cycles so firmly, since it undercut the idea

of succession in time which is so necessary to developing an idea of, andapplying, the law of cause and effect.

SOME CHINESE PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC "EXPLANATIONS" THAT HINDERED SCIENCE

Another metaphysical delusion the Chinese sadly suffered from (though

they were hardly alone) were various a priori pseudo-scientific "explanations"

of natural events. In Chinese thought the two best examples of this were the

two forces of Yin and Yang on the one hand, and the book of Changes (I Ching)

on the other. Yin (female) and Yang (male) were seen as the two forces

pervading all of nature and its processes. As a result, the Chinese would not

hesitate to assign "the changes of weather to the stillness of Yin."23 Yin

and Yang were used to explain why magnets became attracted to each other, and

describe the movements of the sun, moon, and stars.24 Likewise, the I Ching

was a manual of divination that would line up various sayings and

interpretations of natural events through various symbols such as lines,

trigrams, and hexagrams. Through this book any observation in nature ("omen")

would be given an instant interpretation as to its cause and significance.

(Compare this to the Roman practice of examining animals' livers to make major

decisions of state, etc.) Although normally very sympathetic to the claims of

Chinese culture and science, Needham still was willing to say: "Yet really

they [Han dynasty scholars] would have been wiser to tie a millstone about the

neck of the I Ching and cast it into the sea."25 The most widespread of

pseudo-scientific delusions was astrology. It plagued Islam, India, even

Christendom to a great degree--and China as well.26 At the Emperor's court,

21Jaki, Science and Creation, pp. 34-35.

22His emphasis, as quoted in Ibid., p. 35.

23Ibid., p. 45.

24Ibid.

25Needham, Science and Civilisation, p. 311.

26Ibid., pp. 351-357.

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various "wise men" (astrologers, astronomers, and meteorologists) would

interpret and blame on the emperor various portents and "signs."27 What are

the costs of having such a priori "explanations" of natural events? They dull

the human mind through thinking it DOES know why such events occur, when in

fact the laws of nature are still unknown. To posit such metaphysical

entities as Yin and Yang, or the effects of stars upon people's destinies, and

then say they determine natural processes, creates the delusion of knowledgeout of ignorance. Of course, the Chinese were hardly alone in embracing such

science-hindering deceptions--see Aristotle's On the Heavens, and his four

elements theory, for starters.

THE CHINESE VERSION OF THE ORGANISMIC VIEW OF NATURE

Another metaphysical conception that impeded Chinese science was an

organismic view of nature, which sees all of nature as being one huge living

creature that goes through a repeating cycle of birth, maturity, and death.

Humans are considered to be part of it and fundamentally being like the

animals, not basically different from them. Correspondingly, Taoism, which

was espoused by the sixth century b.c. Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, conceived

of nature as "an all-encompassing living entity animated by impersonalvolitions," was a source of trouble for Chinese science.

28 True, Needham,

sympathetic as always, strongly emphasizes how Taoists would contemplate

nature and believe it had an underlying order. (Needham believed "Tao" could

be best translated "order of nature").29 However, the Taoists would not

actively investigate nature as opposed to a mystically-inclined contemplation

and inactivity concerning it: "He who practices the Tao, daily diminishes his

doing. He diminishes it and again diminishes it, till he arrives at doing

nothing. Having arrived at this non-inaction, there is nothing that he does

not do."30 This attitude of non-activity (not intended to be taken literally,

as even Jaki commented),31 is at least partly due to how Taoism would see man

as totally weak and impotent compared to the majesty of nature, with which he

27See Wolfram Eberhard in John K. Fairbank, ed., Chinese Thought and

Institutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 69. In

fairness, since portents were used as political weapons many times (shades of

Rome!), in order to dissuade the emperor from this or that decision, they were

not always taken seriously. Nevertheless, such activities did not promote

science or a scientific worldview: "It is quite obvious that specialists were

interested only in the political application of their observations and not in

philosophical reasoning or scientific abstractions." 28Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 29.

29Needham, Science and Civilisation, pp. 36, 56-57, 558.

30The Chuang Tzu, the second most important text, as quoted in Jaki, Science

and Creation, p. 29. Wide variations of belief existed in Taoism, whichincluded many practitioners of the Chinese peasantry's varied superstitions,

not just philosophers like Lao-tzu. See N. Sivin, "On the Word 'Taoist' as a

Source of Perplexity. With Special Reference to the Relations of Science and

Religion in Traditional China," History of Religions, February-May 1978, p.

314. 31Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 29.

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should see an intimate organic unity.32 By seeing nature as a vast, single

spontaneously acting organism (albeit as mystically inspiring as that may be

for many in the New Age/environmentalist crowd), it kept them from developing

the idea of natural law in the modern sense. Needham himself, although noting

the tie in Chinese thought between the cyclical time and organismic concepts,

failed to realize the negative consequences of such concepts by trying to put

them in the most positive light.

33

However, such ideas have negative effectson developing an active mindset towards nature, which was necessary to develop

modern science, as Jaki describes:

The organismic concept of the world (not in the Whiteheadian

sense) invariably fosters a state of mind dominated by a nostalgic

longing for the primitive golden age, with its idyllic settings in

which everything takes place in an effortless way. In that

dreamlike condition of spontaneousness men live off nature without

disturbing it [compare this thought with what some

environmentalists believe today!], and carry out their social

propensities without the sense of constraint due to authorities

and laws.34

In short, both belief in eternal time cycles and in nature as one huge

organism encourage the passivity that opposes the mentally active,

investigating spirit of science, such as shown by Aristotle and Leonardo da

Vinci (1452-1519) dissecting carcasses, instead of just meditating and

contemplating passively deep within a forest about Nature.

CHINESE CONCEPTIONS OF THE LAWS OF NATURE

The Chinese believed nature both was orderly and had an actual existence

(when not influenced by the rather pervasive, Hindu-derived Buddhist ideas of

maya, the belief all is illusion). However, they lacked the concept of

natural law, as ordained by a personal God, which assured nature was

rationally understandable to mankind's mind:

It was not that there was no order in Nature for the Chinese, but

rather that it was not an order ordained by a rational personal

being, and hence there was no conviction that rational personal

beings would be able to spell out in their lesser earthly

languages the divine code of laws which he had decreed

aforetime.35

32Ibid., p. 36. Note the contrast to the Hebrew view of Gen. 1, where

mankind is place above and separate from nature, as being like God, and

dominate over the animal kingdom. 33

Ibid., p. 42. 34Ibid., p. 43. 35Needham, Science and Civilisation, p. 581. The Judeo-Christian mindset

stemming from Genesis 1 is that if man's mind was made in the image of God,

and nature also reflects God's attributes (Romans 1:19-20), then scientists

investigating nature can be assured it can be understood by their minds in

turn.

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For a man who was a Marxist (and, admittedly, simultaneously, a very liberal

Protestant),36 this must have been a very hard concession to make, as Jaki

observed,37 for it points to an ideological cause for why modern science did

not appear in China, not an economic or political cause. In contrast, the

view of how Christianity's concept of the rationality of God was tied to the

rise of science in the West is best stated by the English philosopher AlfredNorth Whitehead (1861-1947):

I do not think, however, that I have even yet brought out the

greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the

scientific movement. I mean the inexpungable belief that every

detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a

perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. . . .

When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude

of other civilisations when left to themselves, there seems but

one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval

insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the

personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek

philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the searchcould only result in the vindication of the faith in

rationality.38

The rationality of God is implied through certain texts, although written

specifically concerning church services, a broader application of these texts

is still appropriate: "God is not a God of confusion but of peace," who wants

activities to be "done properly and in an orderly manner" (I Cor. 14:33, 40).

Since Whitehead was a pantheist, he would not be especially likely to concede

too much to medieval Christianity about its sense of nature being rationally

knowable and its role in causing modern science to exist.

WHY DIDN'T INDIA DEVELOP SCIENCE BEFORE EUROPE?

Moving westwards to the land of India, an equally perplexing problem

with the lack of modern science seems to present itself. Hindu civilization

on the subcontinent was ancient, well-settled, and extremely rich materially

by the standards of the time. India routinely ran surplus balances of trade

36Jaki, The Origin of Science, p. 79.

37Jaki, Savior of Science, p. 33. A somewhat different analysis as to why

China developed no modern science due to its philosophy focuses on its

tendency to turn inward to know the mind and the individual, as opposed to the

outside world. See Yu-Lan Fung, "Why China Has No Science--An Interpretation

of the History and Consequences of Chinese Philosophy," International Journal

of Ethics, April 1922, pp. 237-263. However, a sociological explanation forthe failure of modern science to arise in China involving what could be called

"Mandarin bureaucratism," also exists. See Max Weber, The Religion of China

Confucianism and Taoism (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1951), pp. 150-152.

Jaki's analysis doesn't hit on all the reasons why modern science did not

arise in China, though I have stressed it here. 38 As quoted in Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 230.

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with the West, as China did. As late as 1770, after the industrial revolution

had begun by some dating schemes in England, the British wool industry tried

to prohibit the import of Bengali calicoes into the United Kingdom.39 And

enormous credit should be given to the Indian mind for the momentous invention

of the Hindu-Arabic numerals, with their place notation and the concept of

zero. For without this system of enumeration, the (easy) quantification of

natural events and substances, so necessary to the development of modernscience, would never have occurred.

40 (If you doubt this, try multiplying

using Roman numerals alone, without any mental use of the Hindu-Arabic

numerals, MDCCCLXVIII by CCLIX!)

Unfortunately, Hindu civilization as a whole was weighted down with

almost the most anti-scientific metaphysics imaginable. The Hindu concept of

maya, the view that sense data tell only of illusion, not a real external

world, was anti-scientific in the extreme.41 Generally, you do not

39John R. Gillis, The Development of European Society 1770-1870 (Lanham,

Maryland: University Press of America, 1983), p. 13. 40However, Christianity still had a role here concerning the application of

the then new system of numerals, due to its view God was rational and createdan orderly universe. "They [the Parisian precursors of Galileo, Buridan and

Oresme] became the starting point [of modern science] because they were imbued

with what is Gospel truth for Christians though it had never been for the

Greeks of old, namely, that the universe is not God, but only the fully

consistent artifact of a rational Creator. Because of their belief in that

consistency, they could approach with quantitative eyes the phenomenon of

motion in a broad sense, an approach alien to the Greeks," my emphasis, Jaki,

Origin of Science, p. 85. Such an analysis badly undermines the standard

belief of agnostics and atheists that the Greeks could have created modern

science except for the rise of Christianity and the collapse of the Roman

empire. 41Mainstream Christianity could never accept the fundamental unreality of

matter or the material world because Jesus became a material, fleshy Being

through the incarnation (John 1:1-2, 14). Those who thought Jesus was just a

spirit being who just appeared to be a man--the gnostics generally--were

condemned in the strongest possible terms by orthodox Christians, including

the apostle John. For example, II John 7 says: "For many decievers have gone

out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the

flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist." Or, we have I John 1:1:

"What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our

eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life . . ."

Further, unlike Hinduism and its myths, Christianity is a religion based upon

the reality of certain historical facts, such as the death and resurrection of

Jesus Christ. It doesn't really matter, to the Hindu mind, whether Krishna

really did anything as described in a Hindu holy book, but Christianity is ahopeless religion if Jesus didn't really exist, didn't really die, or didn't

really arise from the dead. As Paul said (I Cor. 15:13-15): "But if there is

no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ

has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.

Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we witnessed

against God that He raised Christ." This fundamental difference between

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systematically investigate that which you think is a mirage. Hence--the Hindu

mind turned inwards, and progressed in math by leaps and bounds, but failed

utterly to come up with a science of the external real world, such as physics.

The concept of eternal cycles, with its view of universal destruction and

recreation, saturated Indian culture as well. The sense of hopelessness and

passivity caused by this latter concept is aptly illustrated by the comment of

king Brithadratha in the Maitri Upanishad as he contemplates an endless seriesof the transmigrations of the soul: "In the cycle of existence I am like a

frog in a waterless well."42 Or, consider what the god Vishnu told the god

Indra in the Brhamavaivarta Purana: "I have known the dreadful dissolution of

the universe. I have seen all perish, again and again, at the end of every

cycle. At that terrible time, every single atom dissolves into the primal,

pure water of eternity whence originally all arose."43 Our modern minds,

which presumably automatically reject such concepts, unless influenced by New

Age mush, etc., may see their deadening effects on constructive activity by

how some today react to the fear of nuclear war: "let us eat, and rink for

tomorrow we die" (I Cor. 15:32). Worse yet, death is no escape, for that will

bring only another rather meaningless life by a rebirth, unless you have

reached the final necessary stage of perfection before being absorbed into

Brahma and the end of your individual existence.

THE HIGH COST OF PANTHEISM AND THE ORGANISMIC VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE FOR INDIA

Hindu pantheism caused problems in developing a scientific astronomy,

for the heavens were seen as divine and animate. Here the organismic view of

the cosmos levies a terrible tax, for then the heavens are seen as alive with

a will of their own, instead of being merely inanimate, inorganic matter. In

contrast, eventually, in the West, Aristotle's view of the heavens being

divine and/or intelligent was extinguished, but only after many centuries of

the Christian era:

. . . [D]uring the twelfth century in Latin Europe, those aspects

of Judeo-Christian thought which emphasized the idea of creation

out of nothing and the distance between God and the world, in

certain contexts and with certain men, had the effect of

eliminating all semi-divine entities from the realm of nature.

Thus nature tended to become a mechanistic entity, running

according to the characteristics with which it had been endowed

and powered by the forces it had been given in the beginning.44

Left to itself, Hindu pantheism never would have eliminated the divine,

organismic view of nature since it saw no ultimate difference between God and

the universe.

Judeo-Christianity as based on historical fact that it is potentiallyfalsifiable is very different from the metaphysical speculation of various

pagan myths, whether Hindu or Greek. 42Ibid., p. 7.

43Ibid., p. 8.

44Richard C. Dales, "A Twelfth-Century Concept of the Natural Order," Viator

Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 9, 1978, pp. 191-192.

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The most widespread pseudo-science in Eurasia was (and is) astrology,

and to this day it plagues India with its influence. Tying a person's destiny

to an arbitrary interpretation of a given position of the stars and planets on

some given day is a denial of the scientific outlook. It encourage a passive,

fatalistic attitude in individuals through its complete denial of free will.

Why bother to know or try to change the world, when your destiny has beendecreed by the heavens? Even today, India is saturated by this nonsense, and

far more people take the predictions made far more seriously than in the West.

As Jaki observed: "Call for such conversion [that is, an acceptance of

science and modern technology by a changed mindset] will hardly be heeded as

long as the voice of astrologers is not on the wane but on the rise (in spite

of science and education) and carefully listened to by higher government

[Indian] officials."45 True, astrology attained a grip upon much of the

Islamic and Christian worlds in the medieval past, and even devotees in

modern, twentieth century America such as Nancy Reagan. Nevertheless, the

culture of Christendom had built-in limits to its broad cultural acceptance

since it is seen as an idolatrous system that also denies moral

responsibility. Hence even as astrology grew in the West with the recovery of

the Greek classics and the growth of interest in science,46

the Churchcontinued to condemn it.

47 Unfortunately, India had nothing intrinsic to its

culture that frontally assaulted astrology--hence, the former remains deeply

in the latter's thrall to this very day.

WHY DIDN'T THE ISLAMIC/ARAB WORLD DEVELOP SCIENCE BEFORE CHRISTENDOM?

Now the failure of the Islamic world to produce modern science is much

more curious than India's or even China's. The flourishing of Islamic science

and scholarship under the Umayyads and early Abbasids, using the ancient Greek

classics, was simply remarkable. The medical works of al-Razi and Avicenna

(980-1037) were used by Christendom deep into the sixteenth century, more than

500 years after their deaths. The fact such English words as astrolabe,

chemistry, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, and azimuth are derived from Arabic

shows the influence Islamic science had on the West. Islamic mathematicians

made immense contributions such as al-Khwarizimi (the algorithm and algebra),

Thabit ibin Quarra (studied irrational numbers), Albategnius and Abu al-Wafa

(trigonometry), Umar Khayyam (works on analytical geometry), and Nasir al-Din

al Tusi (trigonometry).48 Furthermore, believing in a single God who created

45Jaki, The Savior of Science, p. 30; Jaki footnotes his source as the

January 6, 1983 International Herald Tribune. 46Lynn White, Jr., "Science and the Sense of Self: The Medieval Background

of a Modern Confrontation," Daedalus, Spring 1978, pp. 56-58. 47For example, Savonrola (1452-1498), a Catholic religious revivalist and

reformer in Renaissance Florence, condemned Florentines as believing inastrology more than God. See Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance

Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, University Press, 1991), p. 79. Augustine

attacks astrology in Confessions (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1961),

pp. 73, 139-142. 48Sydney Nettleton Fisher and William Ochsenwald, The Middle East a History

(New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., 1990), pp. 99-116.

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the universe at a definite point in time, with time linearly proceeding to

judgment day, Muslims were not obvious, easy prey for eternal cycles, the

organismic view of the universe, or astrology. Orthodox Islam did not deny

the reality of the external world, nor was it apt to think the heavens were

divine/alive since they emphasized the monotheistic nature (oneness) of God so

strongly. So why did Islamic science mostly fizzle out after 1200?

Unfortunately, for the Islamic world, its leading philosophical,

theological, and scientific figures made some very serious wrong turns. The

key problem was a lack of balance between faith and reason, which ultimately

extended from the Quran's emphasis on the absolute (and arbitrary) will of

God. No Islamic equivalent of Thomas Aquinas appeared on the scene to

systematically reconcile and integrate the theology of Islam with the

rationalism of the Greek classics, without unduly bending one to fit with the

other. Hence, the two most important Islamic theologians, al-Ashari (873-935)

and al-Ghazzali (1058-1111) were very mystically inclined, and both stressed

God's will as opposed to His reason. Al-Ghazzali's work, Incoherence of the

Philosophers, sharply assaulted the Aristotelian philosophers called the

mutazilites. It asserted the doctrine of occasionalism, which sees the law of

cause and effect as only occurring due to God's continual, direct interventionin the universe. Hence, to al-Ghazzali, if a rock lands on my big toe after I

release it, the resulting pain is only due to God putting it there in me, not

due to the properties of the rock and toe themselves. The direct consequences

of such a concept against the idea of a scientific law of nature can easily be

imagined.49

THE COST OF LACKING BALANCE CONCERNING THE IDEAS OF THE GREEK CLASSICS

On the other hand, the Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averroes (1126-

1198) clearly subordinated their Islamic faith to Aristotle's metaphysics.

Indeed, Averroes' concept of double truth--of saying what was true for

religion was not necessarily true for philosophy--denies the metaphysical

unity of the intellectual and sensible world. This view allows him to avoid

having to deny Aristotle's On the Heavens when it conflicts with the Islamic

faith.50 These two philosophers, much like the mutazilites, fell nearly

completely under the spell of the ancient Greek classics, and could not

conceive how these classics could be wrong. They did not try to reconcile the

conflict between Islam and the Greek classics, but basically ignored or denied

it. Yet, as we will see, such a conflict between the teachings of

Christianity and various pagan Greek ideas, combined with the clear rejection

49Jaki, Science and Creation, pp. 204-205. It is quite clear the

traditionalist theologians beat out the Aristotelian philosophers culturally,

because of the concept of bid'a, which saw any innovation as evil, with one

exception: If the unbelievers used it in battle, you (the Muslim) could useit also. "In the Muslim tradition, innovation is generally assumed to be bad

unless it can be shown to be good. The word bid'a, innovation or novelty,

denote a departure from the sacred precept and practice communicated to

mankind by the Prophet, his disciples, and the early Muslims," Bernard Lewis,

The Muslim Discovery of Europe (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), p. 224. 50Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 206.

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of some of the latter, was necessary in order to strip the latter of

metaphysical falsehoods that would have prevented the rise of a self-

sustaining science. Here, these Islamic philosophers fell into the trap of

accepting easily gained a priori concepts about the physical world. It's much

easier to read and accept what someone says rather than to do experiments or

think carefully in original ways. A true science of physics could not develop

until Aristotle's On the Heavens and Physics were junked. That only occurredin the West due to the tenets of Christian theology conflicting with these two

works, and individual philosophers and theologians pointing out such conflicts

without ignoring or denying them. The rejection of such errors in the Greek

classics in the culture around him made it much more possible for someone like

Galileo to boldly say "Aristotle was wrong!" concerning some point of his

physics which didn't conflict with Christian theology. Unfortunately, this

process of partial rejection and partial acceptance in an overall synthesis

like that of Summa Theologica, the master work of probably the single greatest

Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-1274), did not occur in the

Islamic world. Putting it in crude, exaggerated terms, Avicenna and Averroes

seemed to think Aristotle could think no wrong, and al-Ghazzali and al-Ashari

seemed to think Aristotle could think nothing right. A balance was necessary

here, within the culture and individual intellectuals as a whole to have aself-sustaining science occur, using the insights of the ancient classics yet

being willing to point out their errors, theological and scientific, something

which occurred in Christendom but not the Islamic world, which is why modern

science arose in the former and not the latter.

In addition, and rather strangely considering the tenets of orthodox

Islam definitely conflict with such concepts, the Muslim world had a wide

acceptance of eternal cycles, astrology,51 and the organismic view of nature

as reflected in the belief that the heavens were alive, or even divine. For

instance, al-Kindi vehemently attacked alchemy, the crude, "magical"

forerunner of chemistry, but promoted the ideas of eternal cycles along with

ibn-Khaldun (1332-1406), the famous north African Islamic historian. Both

tried to fit historical events into 20 and 240 year time cycles. Abu-Mashar,

in his Book of the Revolution of Birth Years, said the Deluge would recur

every 180,000 years.52 The Brethren of Purity's encyclopedia that summarized

knowledge (Rasa'il) was saturated with astrology, the occult, and contained

even the view that 3000 year time cycles corresponded with the rise and fall

of civilizations as determined by the Zodiac. Avicenna did not see God as

directly creating mankind (versus Gen. 2:7), but the latter was the emanation

of a series of higher intelligences, each of which grew weaker, until the

final, weakest one made humanity. Astrology ran surprisingly rampant, due to

the influence of the Persians and Hindus the Muslims had conquered, as well as

the Greek classics themselves. Even such a critic of eternal cycles as al-

51

Thomas F. Glick, "George Sarton and the Spanish Arabists," Isis, December1985, p. 497. Glick notes how astrology was considerably stronger in the

Islamic world compared to Christian Europe. 52This view plainly conflicts against Genesis 8:21-22; 9:11-16 and God's

promise to never flood the earth again, as symbolized by the rainbow. Here,

perhaps, having the Bible itself, instead of the Quran (Koran), would have

helped him avoid this error.

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Birundi still wrote a book espousing astrology.53 The end result of these

concepts running amuck, despite they plainly conflicted with Islamic theology,

helped to strangle science in the Muslim world. No equivalent of the 1277

condemnation by Bishop of Paris Tempier against pagan Greek concepts (or other

such condemnations or cultural acts of resistance) occurred in the Arab or

Islamic world.

HOW MUHAMMAD'S VIEW OF GOD'S WILL UNDERMINED ISLAMIC SCIENCE

However, the Muslim failure in creating a self-sustaining science has a

deeper root: Muhammad (c. 570-632), the founder and prophet of Islam, in the

Quran emphasized God's will and power at the expense of His rationality. It

is common for people to think of the God of the Bible as being just like the

God of the Quran, especially the non-religious who think, "All religions are

the same." However, this assumption can be seriously questioned once the

texts and accompanying history of the Bible and Quran are compared. Drawing

upon a list of comparisons made by Morey, some evident differences arise. The

God of the Quran is not active directly in history in the same manner as

Jehovah, since He did not enter history personally as Jesus via the

Incarnation did, but used angels and prophets as messengers. He is totallyunlimited in his possible choices, but the Christian God is limited by His

essence, as illustrated by Titus 1:2, which says He cannot lie. He is less

knowable. Islam's condemned applying positive predications to God; humanity's

knowledge of God consists really only of negative stated attributes such as,

"He is not limited," or "God is not mortal." He is less personal. Allah is

seen as so transcendent men cannot know Him personally or as personally.54

Consider the following sobering comment by Morey, when investigating the

impact of the Quran's theology on science:

6. Because the God of the Bible is limited by his own righteous

nature and there are certain things He cannot do, he is completely

consistent and trustworthy. But when we turn to study the actions

of Allah in the Quran, we discover that he is totally capricious

and untrustworthy. He is not bound by his nature or his word.55

Hence, when al-Ghazzali condemns the concept of the laws of nature as

restricting God's freedom to act, he is perfectly in line with the Quran: It

is not just his personal idiosyncratic interpretation of Islam's chief holy

book. The consequences of such a view were well described by the great Jewish

scholar, Maimonides (1135-1204). He saw the Mutakallium (orthodox Islamic

theologians) as only willing at most to concede the laws of nature were like

the customary riding habits of the caliph going through a city: subject to

change at whim if desired. Maimonides put it thus: "[T]he thing which exists

with certain constant and permanent forms, dimensions, and properties (in

nature) only follows the direction of habit . . . on this foundation their

53Jaki, Science and Creation, pp. 198-200, 206-7, 211.

54See the list of comparisons in Robert Morey, Islam Unveiled The True

Desert Storm (Shermans Dale, PA: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 57-60. 55Ibid., p. 58.

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whole fabric is constructed."56 Hence, the metaphysics of the Quran, by

emphasizing God's arbitrary and changeable WILL, as opposed to His reason,

helped to sink Islamic science through creating a weak view of the laws of

nature and an orderly universe.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND ANTI-SCIENTIFIC PAGAN IDEAS

In the West, pagan beliefs in eternal cycles, the organismic view of

nature, astrological speculation, the divinity/aliveness of the heavens and

the illusionary nature of the external world ran into the hard rock of

Christian theology. Hence, although the classical corpus (as elucidated by

Muslims like Avicenna and Averroes who were not truly orthodox) strongly

encouraged belief in such anti-scientific concepts in the West, there was

always enough intrinsic cultural resistance in the Christian intellectual

community as a whole to keep such pagan concepts from totally mesmerizing

Christendom. Most likely, Christianity by itself, without the Greek classics

(or Hindu-Arabic numerals) would not have created modern science. However,

the dogmas of Christian theology allowed a certain intellectual community to

strip the classics of antiquity of the disastrous influence of these anti-

scientific concepts due to their conflict with their religious ideas, allowinga true modern science to eventually blossom. Of course, if Catholic

Christians had not believed in concepts opposed to these pagan ones due to

their theology, such a conflict would not have occurred and science would not

have reached a modern, self-sustaining form in the West. Duhem, in his Le

Systeme Du Monde, maintained that modern science was made possible by the

Bishop of Paris Tempier's condemnation in 1277 of 219 propositions, which

blasted these anti-scientific concepts of antiquity.57

True, Jaki and Duhem mistakenly overemphasize the contribution of

Christian theology relative to the ancient Greek contribution to the rise of

science. The mindset exemplified by the Elements of Euclid (living c. 300

b.c.) in using general propositions in geometry as proofs and building upon

them through demonstrations, and Aristotle's Prior Analytics, which stated the

laws of logic, the idea of the syllogism, and how to analyze an argument's

form for its soundness, was necessary for the rise of science.58 The Greek

mind always had an authentic respect for reason even in the works of Plato (c.

428-348 b.c.). He was an irrationalist, but still couched his beliefs in

dialogs and arguments that purported to be a dialectical process of reaching

the truth, and not as a mystical revelation. Nevertheless, an important

56 As quoted in Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 214. 57 As Jaki notes, Science and Creation, pp. 230, 245. 58Galileo leaned heavily on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics not just during

his earlier Scholastic stage, but throughout his life. Scholasticism was a

philosophy thoroughly imbued with Aristotelian thought due to the influence ofThomas Aquinas attempting to reconcile Christian theology and the philosophy

of Aristotle. See the works of W.A. Wallace and W.R. Shea cited in Jaki,

Origin of Science, footnote 62, p. 143. This shows, incidently, how the

rebirth of Platonism in the Renaissance may have hindered science instead of

helping it, since Aristotle had manifestly a more rational and scientific

worldview than Plato.

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contribution was made by Christian theology that is normally TOTALLY

overlooked. Imagine--the dogmas of Catholicism promoted the rise of science!

We must not let Galileo's fate at the hands of the Inquisition blind us to

Christian theology's contribution in sweeping away the rubbish of these pagan

beliefs from science, which kept science from becoming self-sustaining and

modern. These beliefs, if accepted, turn the human mind inward, causing it to

accept too blindly what occurs in the real external world, making itimpossible to develop the most basic science of moving bodies (physics).

However, notice that the Christian contribution is not so much as creating a

broad respect for rationality, or the discovery of the basic laws of logic

used in scientific reasoning (as found in the Organon, Aristotle's body of

logical works). Rather, Christian theology (by chance conflict, someone could

argue) shot down the false, self-inhibiting ideas of pagan Greek science,

absorbed much of its respect for reason from them, and then allowed science to

blossom forth. However, since the God of the Bible operates in a much more

rational manner than the stories of the pagan gods non-Christian cultures

believed, Christianity helped promote rationality to a degree as well.

(Doubters of this should carefully read Genesis 1-2, and then compare read the

bloody battles among the gods involved in the creation of the world in the

Babylonian myth Enuma elish, which is absurdly asserted to have influencedMoses/the writer(s) of Genesis). Christian theology removed the intrinsic

stunting inhibitions of Greek science. It did not create science by itself

mostly from scratch. However, neither could have the philosophy of the Greeks

without the theology of Judeo-Christianity have created modern science by

themselves either, for it took Christianity to remove various science-

inhibiting false metaphysical concepts from the former's philosophy to have

modern science born.

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY'S LINEAR TIME CONCEPT OF TIME VERSUS PAGAN ETERNAL CYCLES

Because it would involve repeating exactly or almost exactly the events

of the Bible's history, Christians fundamentally could never accept the idea

of eternal cycles. To a Christian, the thought of his savior God dying

horribly on a stake repeatedly again and again is too horrible to contemplate:

". . . because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself" (Heb.

7:27). Hence, even when some Christians influenced by pagan thought accepted

by idea of eternal cycles, who include the rather unorthodox Catholic church

writer Origen (185?-254? A.D.)59 and even Thomas Aquinas,

60 the concept was

accepted in a highly mitigated, attenuated form that greatly lessened its ill

effects.61 Origen and Thomas both still believed in an absolute starting

point (creation), and ending point (judgment). They still believed free will

existed, which mean the passivity and sense of hopelessness induced by the

treadmill of meaningless alterations of catastrophes and golden ages in ages

past and to come was largely removed. Some early Christian theologians, such

as Jerome (c. 374-419 A.D., translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible) and

59Ibid., pp. 169-171.

60Ibid., pp. 225-226.

61See A.G. Molland, "Medieval Ideas of Scientific Progress," Journal of the

History of Ideas, October-December 1978, pp. 562-564.

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Hippoclytus, condemned eternal cycles totally.62 Augustine, the greatest of

the Catholic Church s earlier writers (354-430 A.D.), was more equivocal, but

was willing to forcefully condemn the more literal forms of eternal cycles,

and still believed in creation and judgment. He denied reincarnation as well.

This allowed him to maintain a basically linear concept of time with the two

end points between God beginning everything and judging everyone.63 Bishop

Tempier's condemnations in 1277 helped put a limit on the acceptance of suchanti-scientific doctrines through an attack on eternal cycles in proposition

92, and against the eternal existence of the universe (a belief necessarily

tied to the former) in propositions 83-91. These condemnations helped keep

many philosophers/theologians in Christendom from totally capitulating to

Aristotelian thought, as had happened with Islamic culture with Avicenna

Averroes, and the mutazilites.64 Oresme (1323?-1382), a direct forerunner of

Galileo in developing physics freed from Aristotelian conceptions, condemned

belief in such cycles.65 Hence, the Christian belief in creation and judgment

kept Christendom off "the treadmill of the Yugas" (Jaki's phrase), killing a

sense of passivity caused by helpless hopelessness, by promoting a linear

conception of time that made its precise quantification and cause-effect

relations to be more easily conceived.

Astrology, that prime example of an answer-giving a priori pseudo-

science, ran into repeated condemnations by church writers and theologians in

the West. Augustine, as noted above, blasted it in the Confessions.

Hippolytus hit it hard in The Refutations of All Heresies.66 While the early

medieval Church fought astrology very successfully, the increasing interest in

science due to the recovery of the Greek classics, made interest in astrology

surge as well.67 Correspondingly, a condemnation of astrology figured in

proposition 105 of Tempier's list.68 Oresme told the king of France, his

patron, in a booklet to ignore astrology.69 Isadore of Spain in the early

medieval church attacked it also.70 Roger Bacon (c. 1220-1292), famous for

his predictions of future human inventions, agreed with astrology to some

degree, but still rejected its control over individuals' destinies as opposed

62Jaki, Science and Creation, pp. 166-167, 175-176.

63Jaki, Science and Creation, pp. 178-184. See also Molland, "Medieval

Ideas," p. 562. "Eternal cycles" are only "eternal" if they have no beginning

(creation) and no end (judgment). If they are eternal, then they induce the

existentialist feeling of hopelessness, of life being two spans between

nothing, of nothing being important since all doesn't matter since everything

will be destroyed, etc. 64Jaki, Ibid., p. 229. Also see Edward Grant, "The Condemnation of 1277,

God's Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages," Viator,

Vol. 10, 1979. 65Jaki, Ibid., p. 237.

66

Ibid., p. 166. 67Lynn White, Jr., "Science and the Sense of Self: The Medieval Backgroundof a Modern Confrontation," Daedalus, Spring 1978, p. 56.

68Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 229.

69Ibid., p. 237.

70Richard C. Dales, "The De-Animation of the Heavens in the Middle Ages,"

Journal of the History of Ideas, October-December 1980, p. 534.

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to that of nations.71 Astrology did have some major influence in Christendom,

but as even Bacon's case shows, there were limits to the acceptance of this

pseudo-science that allowed science to eventually develop independently of it.

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY VERSUS THE DIVINITY OF THE HEAVENS

The divinity of the heavens, normally closely allied to the organismicview of the natural world, was gradually eliminated by the medievals.

72 The

mesmerizing power of Aristotle (384-322 b.c.), who propounded such views in On

the Heavens, was felt in Europe too, which was why this process took so long.

Jerome denied the heavens were alive, but Augustine remained in an anguished

uncertainty.73 Thomas entertained the notion, but only to a limited degree.

74

Even Kepler, the discoverer of elliptical orbits of the planets, still

believed intelligences controlled the movements of the heavens.75 However,

due to an already developed concept of natural law there were natural limits

on accepting this idea. "The overwhelming majority of European thinkers

accepted the reality of the order of nature [unlike the Hindus], and most

considered nature to be a self-sufficient creation of God, containing all the

powers necessary for its operation without God's direct intervention [unlike

al-Ghazzali's concept of occasionalism concerning the universe's naturallaws]."

76 Of course, the Christian rejection of pantheism, which says the

material world is God also, was instrumental in destroying the idea of the

heavens being divine as well.

The West began to develop the idea of the universe being rationally

knowable since God made it:

The cosmologists [of the twelfth century] felt certain that all of

nature was fundamentally rational because the all-knowing God had

made it so. . . . William of Conches writes that "the world is an

ordered aggregation of created things". And Thierry of Chartes

says: "The world would seem to have causes for its existence, and

so to have come into existence in a predictable sequence of time.

This existence and this order can be shown to be rational."77

71Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 227. More on Roger Bacon and astrology can

be found in: David C. Lindberg, "On the Applicability of Mathematics to

Nature: Roger Bacon and His Predecessors," British Journal for the History of

Science, March 1982, pp. 22-24. 72Dales, "The De-Animation," p. 549-550. Ironically today, this view is

coming back through New Age/environmentalist thinking. 73Ibid., p. 533.

74Jaki, Science and Creation, pp. 225-226.

75Dales, "The De-Animation," p. 550.

76

Ibid., p. 547. 77Tina Stiefel, "Science, Reason and Faith in the Twelfth Century: TheCosmologist' Attack on Tradition," Journal of European Studies, March 1976, p.

4. Also see her article on a highly similar subject: "The Heresy of Science:

A Twelfth-Century Conceptual Revolution," Isis, September 1977, pp. 346-362.

In a useful corrective to Jaki, she points out the resistance faced by these

innovators from other theologians or philosophers. Also along the same lines

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The clock maker metaphor for the universe by used by Oresme.78 Bacon felt all

branches of learning had basic unity, interdependence, and interconnectedness

since only one God made them all.79 With the approval Thomas gave to reason

in Summa Theologica, science could go forward as secure in the existence of

natural law, which was a concept al-Ghazzali and al-Ashari denied to Islam by

emphasizing God's will and power too much relative to His reason.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BURIDAN AND ORESME IN BUILDING THE FOUNDATIONS GALILEO USED

The first key steps in totally discarding Aristotle's physics were done

by Buridan and Oresme. For Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci had leaned upon them

indirectly for many of their seemingly totally new ideas in physics or in

other fields.80 Ancient Greece had developed a science of geometry that could

be called "modern," but this concerns mental entities, not material objects.

Its physics remained hopelessly backward by comparison due to pagan ideas

about eternal cycles, the irrationality of the universe, and the divinity of

the heavens. The second century astromer Ptolemy, whose work the Almagest

espoused an earth-centered solar system, as well as Plato, believed the

heavens were divine, which prevented belief that the laws of motion on earthapplied to the stars and planets, and in developing correct conceptions of

these laws to begin with. By contrast, the medieval Christian Catholic

Buridan, in a crucial passage, anticipated the idea of inertia (the idea an

object once in motion continues to move in the same direction until it

encounters resistance) through his discussion of impetus. Notice the

reference to God not directly making the laws of nature operate:

Also, since the Bible does not state that appropriate

intelligences move the celestial bodies, it could be said that it

does not appear necessary to posit intelligences of this kind,

because it would be answered that God, when He created the world,

moved each of the celestial orbs as He pleased, and in moving them

He impressed in them impetuses which moved them without His having

to move them any more except by the method of general influence

whereby He concurs as a co-agent in all things which take place;

'for thus on the seventh day He rested for all work . . .' [Gen.

2:2] And these impetuses which He impressed in the celestial

bodies were not decreased nor corrupted afterwards, because there

was not inclination of the celestial bodies for movements.81

of a corrective, although it is rather speculative, is: Manfred Gordon, "A

Strategy For Medieval Science," Diogenes, Winter 1981, pp. 70-93. These

innovators did face serious opposition, even persecution, which should not be

ignored. 78

Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 240. Jaki notes that Oresme did notdispense with the notion the heavens had intelligences, but this metaphor

certainly leads in this direction. 79Ibid., p. 226.

80H. Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800 (London: G. Bell

and Sons Ltd., 1949), pp. 8-9. 81Jaki, Savior of Science, p. 53.

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Also note this additional statement as a nascent form of the idea of inertia:

But because of the resistance which results from the weight of the

[waterwheel of the] mill, the impetus would continually diminish

until the mill ceased to turn. And perhaps, if the mill should

last forever without any diminution or change, and there were noother resistance to corrupt the impetus, the mill would move

forever because of its perpetual impetus.82

While these passages are only halting steps on a long road to repealing

Aristotle's physics, they do show a move to break out of his conceptions of

how moving bodies move. These men show that the Church never uncritically

accepted the Greek classics as many in the Islamic world had done earlier.

True, it tied itself and lent its authority to the Greek classics excessively,

which set the stage for its eventual disaster resulting from it using force

that made Galileo recant his belief that the earth moved. With the later

discoveries of Galileo, Hooke, Kepler, Torricelli, Boyle, Newton, and others,

Europe's science took a vast qualitative leap, but we should not overlook its

origins and these men's predecessors in the Middle Ages.

THE MERTON THESIS STATED

Now Merton's thesis does not claim as much for Christianity as the

Duhem-Jaki thesis does, for the former merely sees seventeenth century Puritan

ethical values as being conducive to engaging in scientific endeavors. One

partial critic of Merton's thesis pointed out how some values of Puritanism

opposed science even as some promoted it:

If seventeenth-century science grew in harmony with Puritan values

of utility, reason, empiricism, and the glory of God, it also grew

by distancing its activities and goal from other values or

sentiments displayed by Puritanism: intolerance, dogmatism,

enthusiasm.83

Also, since Merton is a sociologist, he is approaching science through its

relationship to the rest of society, which is an externalist approach, instead

of looking at science from inside its own history.

Merton lists various values that helped promote science among Puritan

82Dales, "The De-Animation," p. 547. However, note that Dales says that

Buridan still was largely Aristotelian in outlook. A similar point in made by

A.C. Crombie in Augustine to Galileo, vol. 2, Science in the Later Middle Agesand Early Modern Times XIII-XVII Centuries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1961), pp. 66-73. Hence, Buridan was making only the first steps

towards a correct physics that broke away from Aristotle's mistakes, it must

be stressed. 83Thomas F. Gieryn, "Distancing Science from Religion in Seventeenth-Century

England," Isis, December 1988, p. 590.

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Englishmen in the seventeenth century.84 One is to glorify God and serve Him

through doing activities of utility to the community as a whole, as opposed to

the contemplative, monastic ideal of withdrawal from the community. Through

"the drive for the conviction of one's election, . . . the Calvinistic

doctrine of predestination escapes any drift toward an apathetic pessimism."85

Through emphasizing a vocation (again, something useful to the community as a

whole) this created diligence, industry, and hard work in Puritans. As theQuaker leader Baxter put it: "No: no man should do so without a special

necessity or call: for there are general precepts on all that are able, that

we live to the benefit of others, and prefer the common good, and as we have

opportunity do good to all men."86 The result is the individual chooses the

vocation that is best suited for his abilities. Reason and education were

both praised, the latter needing to be practical in nature, not highly

literary in content, and definitely not consisting in the philosophy of

scholasticism, with which the Catholic "Angelic Doctor" Thomas Aquinas is

identified.

VARIOUS ENGLISH PURITAN SCIENTISTS

The religious values and beliefs of many English scientists of thisperiod are easily documented. For instance, Charles Boyle (1627-1691), the

deviser of the namesake law concerning the compression of gases, the English

chemist and physicist wrote in his last will and testament: "Wish [the Royal

Society, a group of scientists] a happy success in their laudable Attempts, to

discover the Nature of the Works of God, and prayer that they and all other

Searchers into Physical Truths, may Cordially refer their Attainments to the

Glory of the Great Author of Nature, and to the Comfort of Mankind."87 John

Ray (1627-1705), the great biologist, told a friend that sparing time to

investigate nature was good: "What time you have to spare you will do well to

spend, as you are doing, in the inquisition and contemplation of the works of

God and nature."88 Although not a Puritan himself, Francis Bacon (1561-1626),

who some have thought wrote Shakespeare's plays, had a Puritan mother who (as

mothers tend to do!) influenced him. His emphasis on the utility of

scientific discoveries, as opposed to gaining knowledge for its own sake,

which was Aristotle's tendency, has a Puritan ring to it. Forty-two of the 68

founding members of the Royal Society (starting through meetings in 1645

unofficially) for which their religious background was known were Puritans.

Such a high proportion is very much out of whack compared to their proportion

in the total English population, which was mainly Anglican. Sir Robert Moray,

Sir William Petty, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, John Wallis, and Jonathan

Goddard were all prominent leaders of the Royal Society--and all Puritans.89

Furthermore, the scientific method needs both an empiricist and

84Merton, "Science," pp. 420-459 for general statements in this section.

85Ibid., p. 423.

86Ibid., p. 423.

87Gieryn, "Distancing Science," p. 590.

88Merton, "Science," p. 445.

89Ibid., pp. 471-473.

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rationalist90 approach to nature to work properly, something which Jaki comes

back to again and again. Curiously, Puritanism provided both by having the

rationalism of Augustine's type of Neo-Platonism, yet needing empiricism in

order to serve one's calling (vocation/occupation) and be useful to the

community as a whole.91 The irony to this is that the man who sparked the

Reformation, Martin Luther (1483-1546) had anti-rationalistic tendencies,92

and attacked the Copernican view of the universe. John Calvin (1509-1564),whose Institutes of the Christian Religion systematically set the doctrinal

agenda of many Protestants, including the Puritans, was not enthusiastic over

many of the scientific discoveries of his day.93 What this shows is the

unintended consequences of the new religious values of Protestantism.94

Interestingly, even as the Counter-Reformation was damaging Catholic science

(the Inquisition's effort against Galileo, for instance), Protestant science

was taking off, helping to make up for the slack.95 Although we have only

briefly surveyed the Merton thesis, partly because it overlaps the Duhem-Jaki

thesis in pointing to religion as positively influencing science, although by

a rather different means. However, it helps to show when pious Puritan

scientists discussed thinking God's thoughts after Him and trying to know

God's attributes better through studying His creation (compare Romans 1:20),

they were not saying this as a rationalization to justify their activities,but really meant it.

WHEN CHRISTIANITY GETS BLAMED FOR SCIENCE: THE ENVIRONMENTALIST CRITIQUE

A supreme irony is that many environmentalists publicly concede the

Christian origins of science, but in a spirit of condemnation, since various

ecological disasters get blamed on the Bible's injunctions to multiply and

subdue the earth.96 The reversion to ideas rejected by our medieval

ancestors--in the "New" Age movement--involves reviving the ideas of eastern

mysticism as found in Hinduism and Buddhism, and dressing them in some western

garb. Of course, the Unity School of Christianity, "New Thought," and

Christian Science have been at this for decades going into the last century.

The religious outlook of Transcedentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),

American poet and essayist, was unquestionably pantheistic. Similarly, the

United Nations' Environmental Programme's Global Biodiversity Assessment, some

1,140 pages long, explicitly condemns the Western (read Christian) worldview

as being "characterized by the denial of sacred attributes in nature, a

characteristic that has its roots in Greek philosophy [a basically false

90Empiricism maintains knowledge is mostly gained by the senses, while

rationalism maintains knowledge is mostly gained by thinking, reasoning, and

logic. 91Ibid., p. 452.

92R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics A

Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), pp. 196-198. This work

attempts to minimize Luther as being an irrationalist, it should be noted. 93Ibid., p. 452.

94Ibid., p. 459.

95Theodore Rabb, "Religion and the Rise of Modern Science," p. 126.

96Jaki, Origin of Science, p. 107; note his footnotes in particular.

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statement, as shown above--they weren't familiar with Aristotle's On the

Heavens evidently], and became firmly established about 2,000 years ago with

the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic religious traditions." Further, they condemn the

abandonment of the organismic view of nature thus:

This perspective, especially as elaborated in the Judaeo-Christian

tradition, set humans not as part of a wider community of beings,but apart. . . . Societies dominated by Islam, and especially by

Christianity, have gone the farthest in setting humans apart from

nature and in embracing a value system that has converted the

world into a warehouse of commodities for human enjoyment.

They go on to condemn pagan cultures which converted to Christianity that

"began to cut down the sacred groves [compare the KJV's translation for

Canaanite Asherah poles!], to bring the land under cultivation"!97

Considering such attacks on Christianity for helping cause a rationalistic,

scientific worldview that led to environmental destruction, it's then absurd

to complain about Christianity or the Bible as the roadblock to science

getting started in the late Middle Ages,98 or to make broad general statements

about the necessary warfare of science and religion the next time evolutionget attacked by various fundamentalists. As Jaki put it:

The argument would make some sense if it were accompanied by the

recognition that the medieval state of mind nurtured by the Gospel

has indeed been responsible for the rise of science.

Responsibility for the effect, the misuses of science, implies

responsibility for the cause. But the latter responsibility,

which in this age of science appears to be the most coveted

credit, the credit for the rise of science, is not attributed to

Christianity when its mentality is blamed, for instance, by the

noted historian of technology, L. White, for the ecological misuse

of science.99

Hence, if you're an environmentalist or New Ager who blames Christian

worldview for creating the science and technology that is supposedly ravaging

the earth100, it's time to start admitting the facts of history showing how it

97 As quoted are found in The New American, April 29, 1996, p. 7. 98The philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper once said: "Science was

invented once. It was suppressed by Christianity, and it was only reinvented

or, rather, recovered with the rebirth of Platonism in the Renaissance," as

quoted in Jaki, Origin of Science, p. 152. This view also slights the

importance of Aristotle's Organon, such as in the Prior Analytics, which

provided humanity with the basic laws of logic. 99

Jaki, Origin of Science, p. 107. 100The standard environmentalist scare stories are largely either false orexaggerated, especially concerning conditions in America itself, wherein the

environment today overall is unquestionably better than it was in 1950. The

newspapers columns of the late Warren Brookes were good on this point. Also,

see Dixy Lee Ray with Lou Guzzo, Trashing the Planet (New York: Harper

Collins, 1990) and Edith Efron, The Apocalytics (New York: Simon and

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helped to cause modern science to exist. It's time to stop repeating bromides

about the warfare of science and religion that could have come from the 1925

Scopes "monkey trial" where the agnostic lawyer for the defense Clarence

Darrow embarrassed William Jennings Bryan, thrice-time presidential candidate

loser for the Democratic party, who was assisting the prosecution.

Briefly above the Duhem-Jaki and Merton theses were surveyed, which showhow Christianity led to the rise of modern, self-sustaining science in Europe

by stripping pagan Greek thought of false metaphysical ideas that hindered

science, or had values conducive to scientific endeavor practically.

Generally the militant secular view that sways most western intellectuals has

allowed the raw facts of the Christian role in the rise of science to be

covered up, often causing intellectuals to leap some two millenia from ancient

Greece to Galileo in their reco

is christianity a cause of science

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